SYDNEY: A predatory fish in the Australian Great Barrier Reef preys on smaller fish by changing colour and pretending to be an adult of their species, scientists have found.
By changing colours, the dusky dottyback also decreases its risk of being detected by predators.
The dusky dottyback (Pseudochromis fuscus), a small predatory fish that is found throughout the Indo-Pacific, occurs in many different colourations and has the peculiar ability to change its body colouration.
Why dottybacks vary in colouration and why they are able to change their colour has long remained a secret.
An international research team led by evolutionary biologists Dr Fabio Cortesi and Professor Walter Salzburger from the University of Basel, Switzerland has now been able to explain why dottybacks adopt different colours.
So far, it had been assumed that the colour variety is genetically determined, meaning that the different coloured dottybacks had likely adapted to their respective habitat background or that colouration was sexually determined.The zoologists now show that dottybacks can actively change their colour in a relatively short amount of time.
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